


not alone

by hailingstars



Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [20]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Drabble of a longer fic I might write, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, aftermath of the identity reveal, drown, febuwhump 2020, v loose interpretation of prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22853479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: “What are you looking at?”“Nothing!” said Peter. He slammed the computer closed and Bucky stood up straight, eventually walking around to the either side of the table with his own cup of noodles and sat down in the chair across from him.He raised an eyebrow at him. “It was a lot harder to look at porn in my day. We actually had to go to the store – ““-it wasn’t porn.” He was quick to cut him off, quick to put an end to another ‘back in my day’ speech. As entertaining as they sometimes were, he didn’t need to hear one about porn.Peter twisted his fork around his noodles, then took a bite, only to spit it back out.“Yeah, it’s hot.”Peter ignored the fire on his tongue and narrowed his eyes. “I was researching.”“That’s what I used to call it, too.”ORBucky and Sam help Peter stay hidden after his identity revealed, and Bucky proves to be the big brother Mystery had pretended to be.febuwhump day 22: drown
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619662
Comments: 54
Kudos: 382





	not alone

Peter blinked at a poster of Spider-Man. Someone had sprayed painted murdered over it, and he felt like someone had stabbed him in the belly.

He was drowning, felt like he was being buried by tons and tons of water, while both himself and his alter ego were being buried by tons and tons of lies. Lies were everywhere. They were blasted through the airwaves via the obnoxious voice of J. Jameson, and written on the sides of buildings, over posters that used adore Spider-Man.

Just a couple months ago the streets were filled with candle lit tributes to Iron Man, and now all that was left was Mysterio and J. Jonah Jameson and lies Peter was powerless to defend himself from.

Peter jumped in place and blinked again when a metal arm appeared, gripped the poster and ripped it from the wall. Bucky Barnes waded up what was left of it and attempted to toss it in a nearby dumpster.

He missed, it bounced off the top, and landed in a puddle of murky, questionable water.

“You’re getting reckless,” Bucky told him. “You’re supposed to be – “

“-I can’t stay in that apartment anymore,” said Peter. “I just – I needed some fresh air.”

Looking around, it was apparent there was nothing fresh about the narrow alley way Peter had wandered down and Bucky had found him in. The air was stale and grim and sandwiched by grey walls covered with chipped paint and rusty siding.

“So open the window,” said Bucky. “You’re supposed to be lying low.”

“I _am_. I’m in disguise.”

“A hoodie and some cheap hair dye isn’t a disguise.”

Peter scoffed and looked around again, looked down at his tennis shoes. They were faded and falling apart, something that, if he were having his discussion with Mr. Stark, he’d point out and tell him to get new ones.

Bucky wasn’t Mr. Stark, though. His shoes were just as worn and his conscience was just as ruined, maybe even falsely ruined, ruined that way where logic said they weren’t guilty, but their hearts condemned them anyway.

“Were you like this with Stark?” asked Bucky, the scowl loosening from his face, slowly breaking into a smile as he shook his head back and forth. “Jesus Christ, you’re almost as bad as Steve.”

Peter disagreed, but returned his smile, or at least, as much of one as he could after being reminded that Tony and Steve were gone, and they were alone.

“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “I was just – maybe I am being a little reckless. The apartment’s just so small.”

Bucky nodded his understanding. “You’ll moved to the next safe house soon enough. Somewhere out in the country, with a lot of fresh air. Don’t lose your head before you get there.”

“Yeah – I mean, no, I won’t.”

They walked back to the apartment after that, with Bucky staying two steps behind and off to the side the entire way. Peter felt like he should be offended, felt like he should be a little bothered that he was old enough to be a fugitive but not old enough for the new Avengers to take him seriously.

It was obvious they didn’t.

Not when they stuck him with a babysitter while the rest of the team figured out a way to prove his innocence, moving him around from place to place in rundown New York apartments, until they found somewhere secure out in the country to send him.

They always made it sound nice, like some sort of vacation, but Peter knew it wasn’t like that.

It was a hideout. Somewhere to stay hidden, for who knew how long, and Peter tired of hiding.

He wanted a fight.

He wanted a chance to prove his own innocence, and as he watched Bucky stick the key into their locked apartment door, he wondered exactly how difficult it’d be to escape the apartment without the Winter Soldier getting wise to it.

*

Peter might have been reckless, but he wasn’t stupid.

Even he knew he couldn’t just slip out of bed in the middle of the night, on a random evening, and out the front door.

For one, their apartment was small. It had one bedroom, that belonged to Peter, and in the living room, a bunk bed where Sam and Bucky slept.

Either of them slept well, and it wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught once and them somehow upping security.

For two, Peter needed intel.

He spent days scouring the internet on an old, beat-up laptop Sam had given him after days of begging, searching for clues, both about what was happening in the world he was being kept from and something hoped would confirm his suspicions about Mysterio still being around and kicking.

Peter was convinced his internet deep dives were more work than anyone else was putting into resolving all the slander, more work than even the FBI were putting into tracking him down and locking him up.

By the time Bucky was serving him lunch, a foam cup of instant noodles he’d just taken out of the microwave, Peter had finally found some evidence, by chance, due to some random YouTube vlogger accidently catching the back of Mysterio’s head in a frame.

Maybe it wasn’t him. Probably it wasn’t, but it was enough for Peter, enough for him to high his hopes and break out of this tired, dusty apartment, which might not have bothered him much if May were allowed to drop by and brighten it up with her smile, if Peter were allowed to see her at all.

His chest ached as Bucky lowered his head down into his space, trying to see what was on the computer screen.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing!” said Peter. He slammed the computer closed and Bucky stood up straight, eventually walking around to the either side of the table with his own cup of noodles and sat down in the chair across from him.

He raised an eyebrow at him. “It was a lot harder to look at porn in my day. We actually had to go to the store – “

“-it wasn’t porn.” He was quick to cut him off, quick to put an end to another ‘back in my day’ speech. As entertaining as they sometimes were, he didn’t need to hear one about porn.

Peter twisted his fork around his noodles, then took a bite, only to spit it back out.

“Yeah, it’s hot.”

Peter ignored the fire on his tongue and narrowed his eyes. “I was researching.”

“That’s what I used to call it, too.”

A laughed forced its way from Peter’s chest. He shook his head as he brought the noodle cup up to his mouth and blew on it, before trying to take another bite and ignore a new, but familiar, ache working its way through his heart.

He’d miss this once he snuck away.

He’d miss these drab lunches on a second-hand dining room table, with Bucky trying to either cheer him up or enact revenge for that time, now years ago, Peter webbed him to the floor of an airport.

Bucky and Sam would become just two other people Peter couldn’t talk to or see or be sure he’d able to either of those things again.

As much as Peter needed to track down Beck, he wasn’t sure he was ready to be completely alone.

He took another bite of the microwave noodles, and that time, they didn’t burn.

*

Peter didn’t leave that night, or the night after, although he kept promising himself he would.

The third night he packed a bag, but he didn’t make it out the front door.

Bucky was awake, sitting at the dining room table, with Peter’s beat-up laptop out and open. Slowly, Peter wandered into the kitchen, standing and staring and catching his eyes when Bucky finally tore his away from the computer screen.

“Interesting research,” said Bucky. “You sure it’s him?”

Peter shrugged. “As sure as I am about anything these days.”

Bucky’s eyes went to the straps of his bookbag on his back, and Peter knew, even by his typical blank expression, that he knew what Peter was planning to do.

Peter wondered if he was angry, the same way he was angry. Angry that it didn’t matter how often they found family in others, their found families were always being torn apart by some misfortune or another.

“Um, Bucky?”

The man was silent, and Peter knew that silence, at least with him, was an invitation to keep going. He sat down across from him, the bookbag still strapped on his back hit the back of the chair.

“Do you ever… get mad at Steve?” asked Peter. “For leaving, I mean, for making us go through this alone.”

“Sometimes, at least at first. Mostly now I just try to understand his decision.”

“Do you? Understand?”

“No – I don’t think I ever will,” said Bucky. “I try and figure out how he could do it, go back and live in the past when the Steve I knew from Brooklyn was always fighting for a better future, but it’s empty. I don’t think I’ll find any answers I want.”

Peter nodded. “Sometimes I’m angry at Mr. Stark… for snapping, because it didn’t have to be him, you know? It could’ve been me or Carol, and maybe we would’ve survived it and things… wouldn’t be like this.”

A memory sprang to Peter’s mind, just like it always did when he thought about Mr. Stark and J. Jameson and the way his life had been run into the ground.

“He just… he promised he’d help me with this.”

He remembered the way Mr. Stark had told him not to worry about it when Peter had showed up at his penthouse, freaking about after a close call. How he’d patted him on the back and said his identity wouldn’t be revealed and if it was, they’d deal with it together. 

“He promised… but he isn’t here and now I have to deal with this stuff alone.”

“Not alone,” grumbled Bucky. He shut the laptop and steadied his gaze. “I’ll help you.”

“Yeah. A lot of good we’ll do, sitting around this apartment, eating instant noodles and watching YouTube.”

“I wasn’t talking about sticking around,” said Bucky. “Let’s go kick this guy’s ass.”

It took the sentence awhile for Peter to process, took awhile for it to get through the filter meant to protect him from anything that sounded too good to be true.

“Really?” asked Peter, his face lighting up. “You’ll come with me?”

“Someone better.”

Relief filled Peter, warming him up inside and out, along with a familiar hope that scared him a little, that maybe he’d found a family he could keep, at least for a little while.

Peter’s eyes drifted over to the bunk beds, where Sam Wilson’s arm hung off the top bunk.

“Think Sam will come with us?”

Bucky shrugged. “After some convincing.”

Peter grinned and nodded his head as he walked over to pull on Sam’s arm and not so gently wake him up.

Sam might have been a bit angry at being woken up, he might’ve sworn and yelled in Peter’s direction, but it didn’t matter.

Peter was on his way to get his life back, and he didn’t have to do it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! 
> 
> plleeassee let me know if you're interested in a longer version of this! I've had this in the back of my mind, and the idea of the three of them hiding out in an apartment, and eventually, roadtriping to hunt Mysterio, won't leave me alone!! 
> 
> as always, kudos and/or comments let me know what you think!!


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